Dominion is not a U.S. company and the machines at question are used in multiple states so I am not sure whether this defamation suit is filed in multiple state courts or at the federal level; however, I would speculate it is in federal court. My reference was to who had custody of evidence. Since it was a federal election, I would assume any investigation or other evidence gathering would have been done by federal officials which would mean the evidence belonged to the investigating agency. We have just gone through a four year demonstration of the difficulty in getting information from them.